DICKENS - GREAT EXPECTATIONS
"If you are thinking that I am not intellectually advanced enough to appreciate this fine art, then you are a follower. Try to think for yourself sometimes. Bye-bye."
"Where's the sex. Was Dickens scared of it. I believe that all great novels should have sex in them. It brings some humanity to them . Great Expectations is a fantasy on level with the Bible but worse, tragicly worse."
"This book definitely seems to be one of those all-American books about America in the 19th century that would be seen in a lot of American Literature classes."
FITZGERALD - THE GREAT GATSBY
"this was a good book about the roaring twenties it was about a man name nick that just came back from world war 1 when he came back he learned the business about stocks and he becomes rich and buys a house. Then when gets settle in the house he finds his old crush daisy but when went started to ask he stuff he finds out she had boyfriend and nick was crushed then later the boyfriend and daisy breaks up so nick tries to get her back he find out that daisy died in a car accident so nick dies in with one question does did daisy love nick? also when daisy died people told there love life’s about the affair and bad things the did behind the love life’s back"
DARWIN - ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
"Regarding the phrase 'preservation of the favoured races,' who or what is doing the favouring? Natural selection? Can a natural selection process favour anything? Really...how does it pick what to favour? By a process! What process? Natural selection of course. It's a circus wheel!"
WALLACE STEVENS - IDEAS OF ORDER
"If there isn't an audience for someone's work, it isn't great. No audience, no talent."
HEMINGWAY - THE SUN ALSO RISES
"this book might be fine in dandy for people who like rambling, annoying, old style literature; but for younger, more modern people... it is a HUGE WASTE OF TIME."
"Hemingway's writing style could easily be surpassed by a seven year old. Descriptions like 'she was really pretty' just don't cut it in the world of top writers."
JOYCE - ULYSSES
"I remember touring NYU when I was between junior and senior year of high school. Right there, in the middle of the Art Department main office, was a black and white photograph of a woman sitting on the toilet. I was shocked. She had a faraway look in her eyes, and she was clearly thinking about something else-- the grocery list, all the things she had to do, something overwhelming. I was... confused but mentally intrigued. I had never seen anyone on the toilet before, and it's not something I actively think about other people doing. Ulysses is a lot like that. Almost as soon as Leopold Bloom, the main character, is introduced, we see him on the toilet."
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
James Joyce - Ulysses III
"I remember touring NYU when I was between junior and senior year of high school. Right there, in the middle of the Art Department main office, was a black and white photograph of a woman sitting on the toilet. I was shocked. She had a faraway look in her eyes, and she was clearly thinking about something else-- the grocery list, all the things she had to do, something overwhelming. I was... confused but mentally intrigued. I had never seen anyone on the toilet before, and it's not something I actively think about other people doing. Ulysses is a lot like that. Almost as soon as Leopold Bloom, the main character, is introduced, we see him on the toilet."
"Horrible. How was this ever published? It's the ramblings of a drunk."
"how many high school English teachers would flunk Joyce for writing as he did in said book"
"Does Ulysses deserve its reputation? I'd have to say no. It's a good book, but it just feels too dry and stale in the context of now. Though it may have paved the way for contemporary literature, I couldn't honestly say that it's the number one book of the century."
"Was this book written in a foreign language? I speak English but it made no sense to me. I started to read it because it is honored as such a great book. But I found no honor in it."
"It's indecipherable. I tried looking at the first few pages before and gave up."
"Does anyone else have trouble reading this or is it just me? Books like these just make me sleepy. It's almost like the ramblings of a schizophrenic."
"though I haven't read it, people enjoyed literature in a different way than we do now in ye olde times."
"The preferences of an intellegent few are of no interest to me, unless that intellegence correlates with something else like the preference for beauty or wisdom. Remember, crosswords and Sudoku are complicated, dense and require time. Whole systems of medieval thought are dense and require time. And indeed the people who loved these useless frameworks were probably intelligent."
"Technical prowess is not a sufficient condition for a great or even good novel."
"Joyce. The premier literature of do-nothing intellectuals."
"Mr. Joyce's works were uniformly terrible ... Shakespeare is also direly overrated, as well as a slew of other literature that is required reading at the HS and University levels. All signs of relevance are lost."
"I ripped through this thing in like an hour and a half, while watching 'Crossword All-Stars' on t.v., and cleaning the fish tank. It's a good book for multitasking, because the plot is so thin and watery.. nothing really happens! Just some shaving, walking around town.. crap like that. Now I have bragging rights to say I've read it, which is apparently a big deal to some people (losers), but honestly, I wouldn't recommend you waste your time. I actually heard that Joyce wrote this book as a basic reading lesson for immigrants who were learning English as a second language. He'd probably laugh himself silly, if he read the reviews on here that try to ascribe deep and oh-so-meaningful symbolism into it!"
"Sad for Ireland that their greatest work of fiction is unreadable. I know. I've tried many times.
...
The historic censorship issues aside,the book is pretty tame by today's standards and wouldn't pass a discerning editor's muster."
"Ah, this is a great con.
The book is, of course, utter drivel.
My theory is that this just Joyce's way of winding people up.
His thinking was (I paraphrase) 'Let me write a complete load of tripe then watch all the reviewers and critics get intellectual about it whilst pretending to understand it'.
Beyond that, good as a wedge for steadying a rickety table but otherwise a waste of ink and paper."
"I think the intellectuals praise the book so much because they are supposed to. Just like culinary experts praise oysters because that's what they're supposed to do."
"I CANNOT STRESS HOW MUCH I HATE JAMES JOYCE FOR EXISTING."
"Horrible. How was this ever published? It's the ramblings of a drunk."
"how many high school English teachers would flunk Joyce for writing as he did in said book"
"Does Ulysses deserve its reputation? I'd have to say no. It's a good book, but it just feels too dry and stale in the context of now. Though it may have paved the way for contemporary literature, I couldn't honestly say that it's the number one book of the century."
"Was this book written in a foreign language? I speak English but it made no sense to me. I started to read it because it is honored as such a great book. But I found no honor in it."
"It's indecipherable. I tried looking at the first few pages before and gave up."
"Does anyone else have trouble reading this or is it just me? Books like these just make me sleepy. It's almost like the ramblings of a schizophrenic."
"though I haven't read it, people enjoyed literature in a different way than we do now in ye olde times."
"The preferences of an intellegent few are of no interest to me, unless that intellegence correlates with something else like the preference for beauty or wisdom. Remember, crosswords and Sudoku are complicated, dense and require time. Whole systems of medieval thought are dense and require time. And indeed the people who loved these useless frameworks were probably intelligent."
"Technical prowess is not a sufficient condition for a great or even good novel."
"Joyce. The premier literature of do-nothing intellectuals."
"Mr. Joyce's works were uniformly terrible ... Shakespeare is also direly overrated, as well as a slew of other literature that is required reading at the HS and University levels. All signs of relevance are lost."
"I ripped through this thing in like an hour and a half, while watching 'Crossword All-Stars' on t.v., and cleaning the fish tank. It's a good book for multitasking, because the plot is so thin and watery.. nothing really happens! Just some shaving, walking around town.. crap like that. Now I have bragging rights to say I've read it, which is apparently a big deal to some people (losers), but honestly, I wouldn't recommend you waste your time. I actually heard that Joyce wrote this book as a basic reading lesson for immigrants who were learning English as a second language. He'd probably laugh himself silly, if he read the reviews on here that try to ascribe deep and oh-so-meaningful symbolism into it!"
"Sad for Ireland that their greatest work of fiction is unreadable. I know. I've tried many times.
...
The historic censorship issues aside,the book is pretty tame by today's standards and wouldn't pass a discerning editor's muster."
"Ah, this is a great con.
The book is, of course, utter drivel.
My theory is that this just Joyce's way of winding people up.
His thinking was (I paraphrase) 'Let me write a complete load of tripe then watch all the reviewers and critics get intellectual about it whilst pretending to understand it'.
Beyond that, good as a wedge for steadying a rickety table but otherwise a waste of ink and paper."
"I think the intellectuals praise the book so much because they are supposed to. Just like culinary experts praise oysters because that's what they're supposed to do."
"I CANNOT STRESS HOW MUCH I HATE JAMES JOYCE FOR EXISTING."
Monday, September 26, 2011
SPECIAL: TATTOO
"'I’ll follow you and make a heaven out of hell,
and I’ll die by your hand which I love so well.'
Fourth. A Midsummer Night’s Dream Act 12. Shakespeare."
HEY IDIOT, GOT A SUGGESTION FOR YOU: IF YOU'RE GOING TO GET A LINE FROM A BOOK TATTOOED ONTO YOUR BODY, AS IN, THIS SHIT IS GOING TO BE ON YOUR SKIN FOREVER, READ THE BOOK FIRST
THE MERE ACT OF TRYING TO OPEN IT TO ACT TWELVE OUGHT TO PUT YOU ON THE ALERT
THEN YOU CAN THINK TO YOURSELF FOR TWO SECONDS UNTIL YOU REALIZE THAT "HEY, THIS COUPLET OF SHAKESPEARE ISN'T IN IAMBIC PENTAMETER AND IS IN POINT OF FACT A RUNNY PUDDLE OF SHIT......... MAYBE I OUGHT TO CHECK THAT MY POTENTIAL TATTOO ISN'T FROM A NO FEAR SHAKESPEARE 'TRANSLATION' OF THE PLAY, INSTEAD OF THE PLAY ITSELF"
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